I would be good, wouldn’t it? If the world was a more seasoned place. In the sense that temperance would reign. While we wait to get to this state, we must try the different spices. A world of flavors. Strange? Probably.
I would be good, wouldn’t it? If the world was a more seasoned place. In the sense that temperance would reign. While we wait to get to this state, we must try the different spices. A world of flavors. Strange? Probably.
“Love is the salt that seasons the world”, “love is passion’s spice” and other cliches like these could be the title of a book that would easily reach the top ten of those libraries that also sell air fryers, cameras, concert tickets, and Moleskine notebooks. This is to say that the author, their agent, their editor, and even their aunt Adosinda, who raised him up since he fell from the plastic chair at Café Katekero to go get watermelon lollipops from behind the counter, agree that the title was foolproof. “This is going to sell like the octopus fritters done Sotavento style”, they exclaimed, nearly in unison, after having agreed that the expression “like hot bread” didn’t have the same frisson since the European Union forced bakers to reduce the quantity of salt almost by half. Why? Because as long as the word “seasoning” appears, everyone understands. Even vegans. The act of eating, which our life depends on, is insufferable without seasoning. This is the same as saying that our own life becomes tasteless with the absence of condiments. Those who know say, because they obviously witnessed it, that the first exclamation of the group of guests accompanying the homo erectus who discovered the fire when first biting into a bit of grilled antelope, was: ”Where’s the salt, man?”. Yes, the salt. Primordial, revealing all the truth behind any flavor, so excellent that its use is forbidden in cocktail competitions (those who would use it would have an almost guaranteed win), is far from being the only one responsible for the fireworks on our taste buds. Spices are, in the world of gastronomy, the epitome of local consumption. They are what connect us to the place where we believe we belong. Without Google Maps, Waze or another app, and much before trying them out, they are the aromas that tell us, actually, where we are!
Olive oil, cilantro and garlic. Not much more needs to be said for us to know what is the geographical location in question, right? It's incredible how even inside this minute piece of land there exists such a well-defined border. A line that separates those who use coriander and those who, incapable of tolerating their smell, choose parsley instead. There, our South is more permissible. Accustomed for centuries to receiving exotic delicacies (it was the moors who brought coriander and mint, citrus fruits, carrots, chickpeas and other rarities) making them real treasures for the palate, taking them in as our own (some say that they can’t differentiate between the conventional sweets and the indian cinnamon), those natural from Alentejo would never risk substituting the parsley from the fritters or the codfish tarts for something more endemic. Because respect is appreciated and all the portuguese recipe books deserve it. On the contrary, what is the restaurant above the center of Portugal that would chop cilantro over some Bulhão Pato clams, risking maybe not having one client from that moment on? Despite this, coriander is inseparable from this dish. As Bulhão Pato, the poet, was a man very close to a female leg, that in the 19th century, was only possible to glimpse when the women of fishermen from Caparica (the beach was then called Land of the Fish), where they would pull the lampreys, the true art of fishnets. It was there, over a plate of bivalves prepared by the people, chopped the branch of cilantro brought in their pocket since the Mountain of Caparica, where they would reside (some stories say that it was João de Mata, the kitchen chef of the Central Hotel of Lisbon and admirer of the poet, who created the dish as an homage, but this isn’t as interesting). Salsa, coriander, mint, lemon balm, gorse, marjoram, thyme, rosemary, pennyroyal, oregano; everyone knows that portuguese cuisine is the best in the world. If anyone ever says the opposite it's because they never tasted it where and how they should have. But the fact that the south of Portugal is the only piece of the land in all of Europe where coriander is crucial, where without it the habitants will limit themselves to dragging the days with profound greyness (and not in that colour palette which is assembled), makes the Alentejo (and the Algarve) the warmest land, unique in the world. Salt, olive oil, garlic, and coriander, yes. Always. It is not “less is more”. It's everything that it should be.
A few years ago, to not say many, I was given permission, after long negotiations which involved empty water demijohns, garish shirts and a few Kenyan shillings, to spend a night with a Masai tribe. It is not necessarily a place where we walk around with sandwiches made with chorizo, or greaves, or mortadella, or even tuna paste in the backpack. Or anything other than water, iodine to disinfect water that isn’t bottled, a camera, and in another time, camera roll film. But the hunger strikes. It took a while to get to that grim moment where someone milked a cow, and after, made a tourniquet around its neck, made a hole in what would be our jugular, and let the blood gush into the milk bucket, stirring so that it wouldn’t curdle. This was dinner. Our late night snack. Our breakfast. Without a piece of bread, a little wine to help it go down and without any salt. No little herb, it didn’t need to be very aromatic, just enough to add a little touch that would make the thing minimally tolerable. Those who would dine with me would beam not only with the snack, “better only if hunted”, they would exclaim, but also with my scornful looks, which they probably witnessed more than a hundred. If it weren’t for that sky filled with unknown constellations, the guarantee that the lions and other predators wouldn't dare to settle down near us, or a little piece of a tiny pumpkin of that soil and sleeping among goats, which are actually a very peaceful animal, and the laughter would’ve been the best part of the night. Better only with salt. On another occasion, I lost ten kilos, (eat that, Herbalife) within a month in Thailand. It could’ve been the heat, which melts you down. It could’ve been the ping pong shows that take away the appetite. It could be the long trips in buses without air conditioning and the humility which doesn’t accuse liters of water consumed as if we were in the center of Andalusia. But it was one of those salads of green papaya. Som tum, for friends. A bowl with threads of papaya still green, cherry tomatoes, green beans, almonds, dry shrimp, garlic, palm sugar, and at least four chilies whose potency could take out a water buffalo. What is the effect of this characteristic seasoning (historians say that the portuguese brought it from Angola) which, paired with the kefir lime leaf and lemongrass (prince tea), make Thai cuisine one of the most unique? You last around four to five hours without hunger. Only thirst. A lot. In the same country, I learned that the typical fish sauce (nam pla) is essential in gastronomy tai (it is basically, salt) which the young men prefer always to find wives who work in factories for this condiment, due to the aroma which they exude. This is the ideal moment to explain that nam pla is obtained through a simple process of fermentation: fish coated with salt at room temperature (which is normally 35ºC) for a year. The liquid which this results in is the sauce used for the fish. Yummm, right?
It was already a problem but it worsened when the modern act of traveling stopped being a search for the exotic and began being a way of obtaining a profile picture of the Eiffel Tower with a scenery. This exoticness, and the various differences which the concept involves, demand an open mind. Minimally, tolerance. Which is something increasingly in extinction. “Other cultures, the more different the better”, this passion which can be the nightmare of many, comes with gastronomy, one of the more defining cultural expressions. For a north american tourist, even a grilled seabream in Baixa is weird. Because it comes with the head. For those who are used to eating fish as breaded fillets or as frozen, it's shocking. It doesn’t surprise me that they look for, wherever they go, they look for McDonald’s. Tastes like home, they would say. Which makes everything a lot easier for the Portuguese, in the impossibility of finding decent roast chicken, half a dozen of fried mackerel, or even a Delta café outside of our borders. There are, of course, physiological impediments. There are people who can’t tolerate spicy food, which makes them put aside hot destinations, where piri-piri is used to approximate our body temperature to that of the air, helping us deal with the heat. This is where the all-inclusive resorts come into play, where there are always “italian” alternatives (the quotation marks are purposeful, because for food to be of italian origin it has to follow very specific rules regarding its seasoning and origin) and, of course, hamburgers. But let’s see, for example in Lisbon, what can bring mass amounts of tourism. The tavern with the best fish fingers became Sanduicheria do Bairro, the tavern with the best codfish is now Empanadaria da Esquina and the house where you could still drink vinho verde is now a hotel with a Bistro Pizzeria. What happened, then, to the tourists that loved Lisbon and its idiosyncrasies, canaries by the windows, shutter that let a glimpse of the china above the doily on top of the refrigerator, restaurants with lots of olive oil and garlic, bay leaf on everything, parsley, cilantro, vinegar in bard, onions, greaves, for cruet and stainless steel counters? But it is for that reason that they respected the culture and the space, instead of turning our dear Olissippo into a mess? They went to Iceland. There at least they can eat rotten sharks.
We are in the month of the Popular Saints’ Festivals [Santos Populares]. Basil is going to come, this delicate and temperamental exemplar of our flower which doesn’t allow it to be smelt before you touch it first, this isn’t a place where you do whatever you want. Basil has little use other than for decoration. If we walk over 3 european countries to the right, we will see that the italians were great inventors when they got together, I suppose so, when they decided to mix basil and tomato. Yes, the transalpine also uses a lot of oregano and rosemary, but basil is the flag (that was the intention of the creator of the pizza margherita, with the same red of the tomato. the white of the mozzarella and the green of the basil). Alfavaca in Portuguese, a single leaf can make the whole kitchen smell, and can turn a tasteless tomato sauce into something transcending. On top of this, there is always the thousand and one cheeses, which is the only way the dairy products which the people use, incapable of touching cream unlike our french neighbours, who add fattened cow's milk into everything, either as a butter, as a version of crème fraîche (and lots of tarragon, thyme and sage). Not universal but as widely used that no one in Europe or in the north of Africa and the Middle East lives without it is the powder which is obtained through dry peppers and sun. Sweet pepper, or paprika, smoked or not, is alongside potatoes, one of the most used foods in the world. The Mexicans inherited it raw, where they add coriander, cumin and chillies, in other words, it looks like they have changed their diet in function with the colonization, which introduced them to corn. The chinese don’t live without ginger, chives and aniseed, and the indians are the most expert users of spices, with which they do magic with, combining turmeric, saffron, cumin, coriander seeds, cloves, cardamom, ginger, pepper, and cinnamon in different proportions to create explosions on the palate.
But none of this is unknown to those with a minimum curiosity in relation to the knowledge and taste palettes of the word. The big challenge is being able to go through paths where the strangeness is boggy. The asafoetida, or assa-fétida in Portuguese, has in its name everything we need to know. The French aren’t keen on adjustments and call it merde du diable. Yes, it stinks. Its a resin extracted from a plant and amply used in the Indian kitchen as a spice, or in spoonfuls, as a digestive probiotic. Our friends from the subcontinent believe that vegetarian dishes (lentils, potatoes, cauliflower and chickpeas) need asafoetida the same way we need water, because the potency of the flavour is something which would, contrary to initial belief, be “boring” (and we know so well that indian cuisine is everything but boring). It harmonizes with sweet, sour, and salty components and spices in dishes. Their aroma is so pungent that it contaminates other spices near it if not prepared correctly. In some South and Central American cultures, insect caviar (they are called escamoles, they are previously roasted and grinded) are widely used as seasoning in traditional dishes, making them spicier or sour, which aggravates the palette of people from those parts. The katsuobushi (conserved smoked and dried tuna) and the niboshi (dried baby sardines) are also essential in the Japanese kitchen. But you only need to travel a little bit to find spices and condiments which are weird to us. The worst is that we fall in love, and on the way home, not even globalization makes it possible for us to reexperience its flavour. The tunisian harissa (spicy pepper paste with coriander, cumin and garlic), the Serbian ajvar (pepper and eggplant paste), the sauce of filipino bananas (its literally a type of ketchup but with a stronger taste of banana, which they put in almost everything that is street food), the Marie Sharp’s Habanero Pepper Sauce, from Belize (a spice so, but so strong, that no one would ever guess that carrots are one of its components) or the fermented tofu curd which the chinese eat for breakfast, passing through the tkemali is very typical in Georgia, made of sour clams, the whole world is a world of flavours which need to be explored and tasted. Unless we want to stay, forever, letting life pass us by.
Translated from the original on The Voyage Issue, published June 2023.Full stories and credits on the print issue.
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